We buy trucks in Lufkin

The rail yard here is operated by Union Pacific and its coordinate sits 1.69 miles from the centre of the city — inside the place, not out on a county road. It is the only rail-yard row attached here.

Inside the place is the part that matters. Most of the yards on this site are attached to a town by proximity because there was nowhere nearer; this one is genuinely in the town it is named for, which means the roads serving it are city streets carrying loaded trucks.

What the yard handles was not determined from any source read for this research. Angelina County has an obvious industry and it would be easy to write the obvious sentence; the record does not support it, so this page does not say it.

That distinction changes the wear pattern. A tractor working a yard 1.69 miles inside a city spends its day on signals, tight turns and short loaded pulls, which is harder on a clutch, a cooling system and a set of brakes than the same distance on a highway.

It also means the trucks are visible and local. Equipment serving an in-town yard tends to be owned by operators based in Angelina County rather than by a distant fleet, and it is sold by the person who ran it.

None of that depends on knowing the cargo. A Union Pacific yard inside a city produces a particular kind of truck history whatever is moving through it, and that history is a thing to ask about rather than to assume.

Those loads run to figures that are worth knowing before a sale rather than after one.

Texas sets gross at 80,000 lb, a single axle at 20,000 lb and a tandem at 34,000 lb. Those are the plain federal numbers, and Texas adds no commodity variance to them.

A permit moves the axles rather than the gross. Under the state’s size and weight schedule a permitted single axle rises to 25,000 lb and a permitted tandem to 46,000 lb, while ready-mixed concrete trucks run 23,000 and 46,000 with no permit at all. Whether a permit also lifts the gross was not established, and this page does not state that it does.

The permit layer is written by named industry — ready-mixed concrete, fluid milk, timber, super heavy single-trip — and there is no permit named for aggregate, stone, sand or quarry products.

Tex. Transp. Code § 621.101; Texas Department of Motor Vehicles size and weight limits. Information, not legal advice.

Beyond the weight rule, the paperwork is where Texas differs most from its neighbours.

We need a title unless the truck is old enough that it never had one. A lost title has a counter replacement, and where none exists there is a bonded route; neither stops a sale.

Texas brands salvage only where repair cost exceeds the actual cash value immediately before the damage, and actual cash value means market value — effectively a hundred per cent, against seventy-five in six states, seventy in Arkansas and sixty in Oklahoma. It is the highest bar recorded on file, and unlike the percentage states it carries a second condition: the damage must involve a major component part.

The separate nonrepairable class has five routes into it, including one — sold for export only — that appears in no other state on file. New Mexico is the only other state with such a class, and there a single test defines it.

Tex. Transp. Code § 501.091. Information, not legal advice, and only as current as the date the rule file was last verified.

All of that equipment is equipment we buy. Log trucks and timber rigs, day cabs and road tractors, flatbeds, dump trucks, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies, and the work trucks and pickups that go with a crew.

Angelina County is a substantial regional market, so a seller 1.69 miles from a working yard has real options rather than one buyer.

Whatever you drive, the offer doesn’t change. We buy all of them.

• Does it have to run?No. It does have to be complete — if the engine, transmission, doors, rear ends, drive shafts, wheels or anything under the hood have been removed, we can’t buy it. Rust is not a disqualifier.
• The hours are high and the miles are low.That is the normal shape of a truck working an in-town yard in Angelina County and it is not a problem. Tell us the hours.
• What about the title?We need one unless the truck is old enough that it never had one. Lost titles have a counter replacement; where none exists there’s a bonded route.
• Do you have to come out to look at it?Not necessarily. We can come to you and drive it away, come and tow it, buy it remotely and arrange the tow, or you can drive it to us. The 1.69 miles across town makes no difference either way.

Beyond a hauling contract going quiet, the reasons are personal ones. Retiring. A medical that went the wrong way. A truck bought for one job that outlived the job.

Yards around the Union Pacific tracks and out through Angelina County usually have one parked behind the shop.

Most of those aren’t happy reasons, and we don’t treat them like they are. Somebody wants a straight answer and the truck gone by the end of the week. That’s what we’re here for.